head to head · open source
portainer vs task
portainer has 38,761 GitHub stars, 2,932 forks, 757 open issues and last shipped 7 days ago. task has 16,324 stars, 939 forks, 190 open issues and last shipped yesterday. portainer leads on adoption by 137% (38,761 vs 16,324 stars). portainer is written in TypeScript under Zlib; task is written in Go under MIT. portainer has attracted 8% as many forks as stars, task 6%. task was the more recently maintained of the two, and both are self-hostable with no licence fee.
Two open source projects, one decision. Both are free and self-hostable — the differences are community size, license terms, language stack and release pace.
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Side by side
| portainer | task | |
|---|---|---|
| GitHub stars | ★ 39K | ★ 16K |
| License | Zlib | MIT |
| Written in | TypeScript | Go |
| Last push | 2026-10-27 | 2026-11-02 |
| Forks | ⑂ 2.9K | ⑂ 939 |
| Self-hosting | Yes | Yes |
| Data ownership | Your server | Your server |
pick portainer if
- You weight community size — 39K stars and counting
- You want the Zlib license terms
- Your stack matches TypeScript
- You value the larger contributor base for long-term maintenance
pick task if
- You want the task feature set and don't need the biggest community
- You prefer the MIT license terms
- Your stack matches Go
- You evaluated both and task fits your workflow better
About portainer
Portainer Community Edition is a free, lightweight container management UI for Docker, Swarm, Podman, Kubernetes, and ACI environments. It is provided as is, at no cost, for the convenience of homelab operators, hobbyists, students, and anyone experimenting with containers on their own hardware. Portainer Business Edition builds on the same open source base and adds the features, hardening, and commercial support that production and enterprise environments require (RBAC, GitOps, edge management, audit, SSO, and more). Find out more about Portainer Business Edition features Take3 – get 3 free nodes of Portainer…
read the full portainer overview →
About task
Task: The Modern Task Runner A fast, cross platform build tool inspired by Make, designed for modern workflows. Installation • Getting Started • Docs • Twitter • Bluesky • Mastodon • Discord Gold Sponsors Community Sponsors Package hosting provided by Cloudsmith . Tooling provided by JetBrains .
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Frequently asked questions
Is portainer or task more popular?
portainer has 38,761 GitHub stars and task has 16,324. portainer has the larger community by that measure.
Are portainer and task free?
Both are open source. portainer is licensed under Zlib and task under MIT. Neither carries a licence fee.
What is the difference between portainer and task?
portainer is written in TypeScript and task in Go. The practical differences are community size, licence terms, language stack and release cadence — all compared in the table above.
Which should I choose, portainer or task?
Choose portainer if you want the larger community (38,761 stars) or its Zlib licence terms. Choose task if its feature set, stack or MIT licence fits better. Both are self-hostable.